


SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 



HENRY W. FARNAM 

Professor of Economics in Yale University 



Reprinted from the Yale Review, April, 1913 
[Copyright by the Yale Publishing Association, New Haven, Conn.] 




SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 



BY 



HENRY W. FARNAM 

Professor of Economics in Yale University 



Reprinted from the Yale Review, April, 191 3 
[Copyright by the Yale Publishing Association, New Haven, Conn.] 



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SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 
By Henry W. Farnam 

A MERE economist who undertakes to write about 
Shakespeare must seem as audacious as Orlando, when 
he undertook to get a fall out of Charles, the profes- 
sional wrestler. For that reason the author of this article 
hesitated long before utilizing for a formal study the notes 
which he had been accumulating for a number of years. 
He felt confident that what appeared to him so obvious 
must have impressed others, and that someone must have 
written an artiele, if not a volume, on Shakespeare as an 
Economist. Have we not had books dealing with Shakes- 
peare's grammar, his pronunciation, his punctuation; his 
knowledge of history and jurisprudence; his morality; his 
acquaintance with birds, with natural history, and with 
classical antiquity; his familiarity with medicine and the 
Bible; and even with his insomnia? And how can critics 
have overlooked his interest in economics? Economic con- 
ditions everywhere determine to a large extent political 
power, social relations, and the organization of the family, 
all of which are important elements in the business as well 
as the romance of life. Economic questions cannot there- 
fore have entirely escaped the attention of an author who 
considered actors "the abstract ana* brief chronicles of the 
time," and who held it to be their function "to hold, as 
'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own 
feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body 
of the time his form and pressure." Let us but look care- 
fully enough into Shakespeare's mirror, and we shall surely 
learn something of the part played by general economic con- 
ditions in the body of the time. 



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SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 437 



The writer still believes that somebody, somewhere, has 
done the very thing he is doing, and has done it better. But 
inasmuch as a fairly careful search has failed to reveal any- 
thing of the kind, he has accepted the invitation of the 
editor of the Yale Review to publish a part of his essay, 
omitting for the sake of brevity many of the citations and 
discussions in the longer study. In the case of Orlando, 
audacity was justified by the event. May it not, in the 
present case, be at least excused? 

If we examine first of all Shakespeare's plots, we notice 
that in not a few of his plays the action turns either wholly 
or in part upon economic questions. In "Timon of 
Athens" we have the example of a man not only rich but 
lavishly generous, so generous, in fact, that he impoverishes 
himself in order to be kind to his friends. But when he 
finds himself pinched and confidently calls upon those whom 
he has helped to come to his assistance and lend him money, 
they all begin to make excuses. His indignation at this 
ingratitude embitters him and finally unhinges his mind. 
We have here one of those economic situations which are 
liable to occur under any organization of society, whether 
patriarchal or capitalistic, and many a Wall Street mag- 
nate of our day has found himself, when fortune ceased to 
favor him, pushed aside as mercilessly as was Timon of 
Athens. As a composer will often take a simple theme and 
develop it into a symphony, so it almost seems as if Shakes- 
peare had developed the tragedy of "Timon of Athens" 
out of the thought expressed by Jaques in "As You Like 
It": 

Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens; 
'Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look 
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there? 

"The Merchant of Venice" is in a sense the antithesis of 
"Timon of Athens." Instead of taking as its motive the 
cruelty of ingratitude, it takes the self-sacrifice of friend- 



438 YALE REVIEW 

ship. Merely to give Bassanio the means to carry on suc- 
cessfully a courtship, Antonio assumes a financial obliga- 
tion which nearly costs him his life. But it is not only an 
economic situation that Shakespeare depicts. The chief 
interest of the play lies in the antagonisms resulting from a 
question of economic theory. I should not think it neces- 
sary to enlarge upon the story of so familiar a play, were it 
not that so accomplished a scholar as Mr. John Masefield 
seems to miss what seems to an economist the main point 
of the dramatic action. In a synopsis of "The Merchant of 
Venice," which he gives in his book on Shakespeare, he 
begins the story with the episode of the three caskets. He 
then goes on to say that the play "illustrates the clash 
between the emotional and the intellectual characters," 
Antonio being the emotional and Shylock the intellectual 
man. Now the caskets are absolutely incidental to the 
plot. They might have been left out altogether, and Bas- 
sanio might have wooed the fair Portia by the conventional 
methods of love-making, without requiring the change of 
a comma in the rest of the play. Nor can I feel that Mr. 
Masefield touches the essentials of the drama when he refers 
to the clash between the emotional and the intellectual char- 
acters. Shylock was not especially intellectual. Indeed it 
was because he yielded to his hatred of the Christians so 
far as to introduce an element of revenge into a business 
transaction, that he got into trouble in the Duke's court. 
Nor was Antonio, the serious, prosperous man of business, 
an emotional being. No, the real, and to my mind the 
important clash, apart from racial antagonism, was the clash 
between the mediaeval and the modern conception of inter- 
est; and it was this divergence of view which lay at the 
bottom of a good deal of the feeling between Jews and 
Christians in the Middle Ages. 

This question is broached significantly early in the play, 
and the arguments pro and con are presented by Shakes- 
peare with his usual power of condensation. The mediaeval 



SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 439 

schoolmen condemned the taking of interest on a number of 
grounds. One was that it was forbidden in the Old Testa- 
ment to a Jew to take interest of another. Another was 
that gold does not produce gold. This is the one on which 
the discussion in "The Merchant of Venice" turns, and 
which is epitomized in the expression of Antonio : 

. . . when did friendship take 

A breed for barren metal of his friend? 

Money cannot produce money; therefore it is robbery to 
take from a man in return for a loan that which does not 
result from the article loaned. Shylock justifies the taking 
of interest by telling the story of Jacob and Laban. The 
story as told does not seem to fit the case very well, as has 
been remarked by commentators; and Antonio very natu- 
rally criticises it by saying: 

This was a venture, sir, that Jacob served for; 
A thing not in his power to bring to pass, 
But sway'd and fashion'd by the hand of heaven. 
Was this inserted to make interest good? 
Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams? — 

to which Shylock answers, "I cannot tell; I make it breed 
as fast." 

There is one explanation of this argument, which makes 
it seem to the mind of an economist, at least, perfectly 
reasonable. Although Shylock dwelt at perhaps unneces- 
sary length upon the trick of the peeled wands, the story as 
a whole suggests the argument which modern economists 
use against the Aristotelian doctrine of the sterility of 
money. It is simply that, though money cannot breed 
money, it may buy those things which do reproduce them- 
selves and add to the wealth of the possessor. It is as a 
result of this discussion that Shylock, while ironically offer- 
ing to loan money without interest, introduces a little joker, 
"a merry sport," as he calls it, into the contract, which 



440 YALE REVIEW 

authorizes him to cut a pound of flesh from Antonio's breast 
if he fails to repay the loan promptly. The whole seems an 
attempt on Shylock's part to get even with the haughty 
Christians by proving a reductio ad absurdum of their 
theory of loaning money. He holds that it is proper to take 
interest. They hold that it is not, and that loans should be 
made for friendship. "Very well," says he to himself, "if 
you want to treat a business transaction as a matter of 
friendship, why not also use it as a means of revenge?" 
This starts the whole chain of events which leads to the 
trial scene, when Portia first trips up the Jew by pushing 
to an extreme his literal interpretation of a contract which 
he himself had in the beginning described as framed "in a 
merry sport," and then, reversing her logical process, goes 
to the essence of the transaction and shows that it was really 
a plot against the life of a Venetian — and therefore against 
the criminal law. "The Merchant of Venice," however, 
involves more than antagonistic views of usury. It really 
involves a discussion of the extreme laissez faire philosophy 
of economics. Shylock in a significant sentence says, 
"Thrift is blessing, if men steal it not." In other words, he 
stands for the night-watchman theory of government. Any 
piece of clever trickery is legitimate, i. e., earns the divine 
blessing, as long as it does not violate the criminal law. 

In "As You Like It" the mainspring of the action may 
be said to be half political, half economic. The banished 
Duke is driven into the wilderness by a political overturn. 
Orlando is driven out by economic pressure, since Oliver, 
having inherited all the family property under the law of 
primogeniture, will not allow his younger brother enough 
to live upon. Orlando emigrated to the frontier to make a 
living, just as younger sons at the present time go to British 
Columbia or Africa or Australia to engage in ranching or 
mining or other extractive industries, with the occupations 
of the hunting stage of civilization thrown in by way of 
sport. Thus the principal characters of the play have all 



SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 441 

been transferred from a highly organized society with fully 
developed division of labor, settled institutions, and accumu- 
lated property, to a state of natural economy, in which the 
pioneer virtues of courage and toughness count for more 
than the refinements of court life. Orlando, realizing this 
sudden change, tries to adapt himself to the situation, and 
as often happens in similar circumstances, overdoes the part. 
Needing food for himself and for faithful old Adam, who 
has followed him on the long journey, he rushes upon the 
Duke and his courtiers with a sword in his hand and a threat 
on his lips : 

He dies that touches any of this fruit 
Till I and my affairs are answered. 

When he finds that they too are civilized, and that, as the 
Duke says : 

. . . Your gentleness shall force 

More than your force move us to gentleness — 

he at once apologizes and replies : 

Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you: 
I thought that all things had been savage here; 
And therefore put I on the countenance 
Of stern commandment. 

"Coriolanus" turns upon a political situation which, like 
many political situations, is based upon economic disturb- 
ances: in this case the dissatisfaction of the plebeians or 
poorer classes of Rome, with the rule of the patricians. In 
"Henry VI, Part II," we have in Cade's rebellion another 
political revolt caused by economic grievances. In "King 
Lear" all of the trouble arises from the foolish distribution 
of his property made by the King, and it is aggravated by 
disputes about the use of its income. The primitive, 
untamed economic impulses are the ultimate forces that 
drive poor old Lear into insanity, put out the eyes of 
Gloucester, and cause Edgar to take refuge in the disguise 
of a half-witted beggar. 



442 YALE REVIEW 

The plot of "Measure for Measure" turns upon a ques- 
tion of social control like many which come up in connection 
with economic and social legislation in modern times. The 
situation was one in which an old law which had long been 
unenforced was suddenly applied severely. The law had 
apparently been put upon the statute book for effect: 

. . . Now, as fond fathers, 
Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch, 
Only to stick it in their children's sight 
For terror, not to use, in time the rod 
Becomes more mock'd than fear'd; so our decrees, 
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead ) 
And liberty plucks justice by the nose. 

The Duke assumes a disguise in order to see things from an 
impartial point of view and finds them rotten. As he him- 
self says: 

... I have seen corruption boil and bubble 
Till it o'er-run the stew; laws for all faults, 
But faults so countenanced, that the strong statutes 
Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop, 
As much in mock as mark. 

He accordingly turns over the entire government of his 
state to a deputy who, "dressed in a little brief authority," 
proceeds to execute the laws literally. The result is that 
before long the stern regent finds himself a violator of the 
law, and is brought face to face with the question whether 
it is better to try to enforce a law which is beyond the social 
standards of the time or simply to connive at evils which 
you cannot eradicate. Exactly the same question is 
constantly coming up in our country in connection with the 
laws against gambling, against liquor, against Sunday 
sports, and other things. Not long ago, some friends of 
Sunday sports in the town of Bridgeport, tried to insist on 
enforcing the Sunday laws of Connecticut strictly, simply 
in order to bring them into disrepute and ultimately have 



SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 443 

them repealed. This plan, if carried out, would have 
created a situation almost parallel to that which is described 
in "Measure for Measure." These examples . show how 
economic and social problems enter into the very plot and 
structure of no small number of Shakespeare's plays. 

Quite apart from the action, we have in the various char- 
acters which Shakespeare introduces in his plays a picture 
of the ordinary economic activities of his day. Kings, 
princes, noblemen, and servants commonly play the lead- 
ing parts. But if we could subpoena the other characters 
to come before us and tell us something of the life of those 
who did the hard work of the country in the reign of Eliza- 
beth, we should have a motley muster of over fourscore 
people, representing practically all the common occupations 
of the time. We should have priests, friars, sextons, and 
grave-diggers; justices, sheriffs, officers, and constables; 
jailers, soldiers, foresters, and mariners; merchants, inn- 
keepers, carpenters, weavers, joiners, tinkers, armorers, 
butchers, tailors, jewellers, goldsmiths; schoolmasters, doc- 
tors, apothecaries; musicians, poets, painters, actors; shep- 
herds and shepherdesses; clowns, beggars, and rogues. 
Let us call to the witness stand, not merely the nobility and 
gentry, but these artless minor characters and we shall see 
how vividly in chance allusions, in figures of speech, and in 
many a casual incident they reflect the economic life and 
even the economic doctrines of the sixteenth century. 

The Elizabethan age was the great age of discovery and 
adventure, and few economic factors of the time seem to 
have made a stronger impression upon Shakespeare's mind. 
Indeed his delight in geographical names is equalled only 
by his magnificent scorn of geographical facts. iEgeon, 
in "The Comedy of Errors," says : 

Five summers have I spent in furthest Greece, 
Roaming clean through the bounds of Asia, 
And, coasting homeward, came to Ephesus. 



444 YALE REVIEW 

In "The Merchant of Venice," Bassanio has vessels 

From Tripolis, from Mexico and England, 
From Lisbon, Barbary and India. 

In "Twelfth Night," Maria says of Malvolio, "He does 
smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with 
the augmentation of the Indies." In "The Comedy of 
Errors" we have a veritable riot of geographical puns. 
Dromio of Syracuse in describing Nell says, "I warrant, 
her rags and the tallow in them will burn a Poland winter" ; 
and when asked for her description, says, "Her name and 
three quarters, that's an ell and three quarters, will not 
measure her from hip to hip." "Then she bears some 
breadth?" asks Antipholus of Syracuse. "No longer from 
head to foot than from hip to hip," replies Dromio; "she is 
spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her." 
And then he proceeds to locate the various countries of the 
world on this remarkable human globe. "Where Spain?" 
inquires Antipholus of Syracuse. — "Faith, I saw it not; 
but I felt it hot in her breath." Again: "Where America, 
the Indies?" — "Oh, sir, upon her nose, all o'er embellished 
with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect 
to the hot breath of Spain; who sent whole armadoes of 
caracks to be ballast at her nose." 

If commercial geography supplied Shakespeare with 
much of the subject matter of his wit, it also served as a 
medium for the expression of sentiment and passion. 
Romeo says: 

I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far 

As that vast shore wash'd with the farthest sea, 

I would adventure for such merchandise. 

Not only the great voyages themselves but the imple- 
ments of the seafaring life help to supply Shakespeare with 
his figures of speech. In "The Merry Wives of Windsor," 
Pistol says : 



SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 445 

This punk is one of Cupid's carriers: 

Clap on more sails ; pursue ; up with your fights : 

Give fire : she is my prize, or ocean whelm them all ! 

In one of the quaint similes of Jaques in "As You Like It," 
he calls the fool's brain 

... as dry as the remainder biscuit 
After a voyage. 

The realism of this expression as well as of the description 
of shipwrecks in "The Tempest," in "Twelfth Night," in 
"The Comedy of Errors," and in "The Winter's Tale" 
will be best appreciated by those who know how it feels to 
swim at midnight from a sinking ship and eat thankfully a 
piece of hard-tack, stored for such an emergency in a life- 
boat. 

Shakespeare was not only impressed with the romance of 
discovery and of the seafaring life but he was familiar with 
the commodities of commerce. Gremio, the suitor of 
Bianca, in "The Taming of the Shrew," gives us an inven- 
tory of the things which Italian merchants of the day were 
likely to buy and sell. He says : 

. . . My house within the city 

Is richly furnished with plate and gold; 

Basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands; 

My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry; 

In ivory coffers I have stuff 'd my crowns ; 

In cyprus chests my arras counterpoints, 

Costly apparel, tents, and canopies, 

Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss'd with pearl, 

Valance of Venice gold in needlework, 

Pewter and brass and all things that belong 

To house or housekeeping. 

There are many other references to foreign importations. 
Biron, in "Love's Labour's Lost," says : 

... I seek a wife ! 

A woman, that is like a German clock, 



446 YALE REVIEW 

Still a-repairing, ever out of frame, 
And never going aright, being a watch, 
But being watch'd that it may still go right ! 

It is evident that Shakespeare had had some experience with 
the little German "Tick-Tack Uhr," and the quotation 
shows that Germany was the source of the supply of time- 
pieces, just as Hamlet's reference to caviare indicates the 
growing trade of the Russian Company. In introducing 
Autolycus in "The Winter's Tale" as a combination ped- 
lar, rogue, and thief, Shakespeare gives no less than four 
lists of his wares, three by the pedlar himself, and one by 
a servant. These lists contain together some twenty-nine 
articles. 

The potato was a comparatively new article of commerce 
in the time of Shakespeare. It was said to have been first 
brought to England by Sir Francis Drake in 1585. Sir 
Walter Raleigh took some tubers to England in 1586, and 
showed them to Queen Elizabeth. It was long after this, 
however, before it became commonly cultivated. Neverthe- 
less, Shakespeare mentions it twice. In "Troilus and Cres- 
sida" he says, "How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump 
and potato-finger, tickles these together!" The lecherous 
Falstaff in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" says, "Let 
the sky rain potatoes." 

The great explorations and discoveries of the time were 
not the only economic events which influenced the mind of 
Shakespeare. He was preeminently a city man. Born in 
a small town, he moved to London where he became familiar 
with the interests of the metropolis; and the incidents of 
exchange, banking, buying, and selling seem to have 
impressed him almost as much as the great discoveries, pic- 
turesque and romantic as they were. The allusions to vari- 
ous coins suggest the great variety in the coinage of the 
time. He refers to ducats, marks, pounds, pennies, shil- 
lings, farthings, doits, and many other coins, enough to 
start a dictionary of numismatology. The coin "angel" is 



SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 447 

frequently mentioned and gives him opportunities for many 
puns. The Prince of Morocco in "The Merchant of 
Venice" says: 

. ■ . . They have in England 

A coin that bears the figure of an angel 

Stamped in gold, but that's insculp'd upon; 

But here an angel in a golden bed 

Lies all within. 

Falstaff also often refers punningly to the "angel." The 
word "dollar" occurs four times, and in several of the cases 
gives Shakespeare an excuse for a pun on the word 
"dolour." That the nature of money was well understood 
by Shakespeare is shown by Bassanio, who in "The Mer- 
chant of Venice" addresses silver as 

. . . thou pale and common drudge 
'Tween man and man. 

This comes quite close to the definition given by economists 
who speak of money as a "common medium of exchange." 
But that buying and selling are simply the same thing, 
and that the man who exchanges money for goods really 
sells money, as is often pointed out by the economists of the 
present day, was likewise clear to Shakespeare's mind, for 
Romeo in paying the apothecary says, "I sell thee poison; 
thou hast sold me none." 

The evils of a depreciated currency were likewise famil- 
iar to him. Otherwise there would be no meaning in such 
expressions as "take a fellow of plain and uncoined con- 
stancy" in "Henry V." Schmidt gives in his "Shakespeare- 
Lexicon" three explanations of this phrase. He says that 
some take it to mean not counterfeit, therefore true. Others 
think that it implies that Katharine was the first woman who 
ever made an impression on Henry. Schmidt himself seems 
to think that by an uncoined constancy is meant a constancy 
"which has not the current stamp on it, and, being therefore 



448 YALE REVIEW 

unfit for circulation, must forever remain in one and the 
same place." All these explanations are doubtless possible, 
but no one of them seems to me satisfactory. To my mind 
Shakespeare's figure was suggested by the debasement of 
the currency which had taken place under Henry the 
Eighth, and which was one of the great causes of the com- 
plaint voiced in Stafford's "Brief Conceipte of British 
Policy." This debasement had taken two forms. First, 
the alloy in the silver coins had been increased ; secondly, 
their gross weight had been diminished. In 1526 the coins 
were issued |-J fine, and an ounce of silver made forty-five 
shillings. Successive debasements had resulted ultimately 
in reducing both the weight and the fineness until, in 1545, 
133*4 shillings were made out of an ounce, and the real 
value of the coins was only about a third of what it had pre- 
viously been. . In the passage in question, Henry the Fifth, 
in wooing Katharine, is trying to impress upon her the 
purity and honesty of his own character. What he means 
to say, I take it, is that he is like the metal as it was before 
it underwent the depreciation and the addition of the alloy 
which comes with coinage, when a pound sterling was really 
a pound by weight of silver. Therefore, it is not because it 
is unfit for circulation that it is constant, but because it is 
too good for circulation. This fact was understood by Sir 
Thomas Gresham, the founder of the Royal Exchange in 
the reign of Elizabeth; and the law which modern econo- 
mists, following McLeod, have named after him, is com- 
monly expressed in the phrase : Bad money drives out good 
money. Shakespeare has in mind another phase of the 
progress of depreciation, when in "Richard III" he makes 
Queen Margaret say, "Your fire-new stamp of honor 
is scarce current." He evidently refers here to the period 
at which a debased coin is first issued and has not yet become 
sufficiently well known to drive out the better coins. The 
expression is quite properly applied by the Queen to the 
Marquis who is laying claim to a greater degree of honor 



SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 449 

than he really possesses, and is, therefore, like a debased 
coin whose face value is much higher than its intrinsic value. 
When Shakespeare wrote, the value of silver, relatively 
to gold, was very much greater than it is at the present 
time, more particularly than it has become since the depreci- 
ation of silver which has taken place during the past forty 
years. The Prince of Morocco in "The Merchant of 
Venice" refers approximately to the value when he says: 

Or shall I think in silver she's immured, 
Being ten times undervalued to tried gold? 

In point of fact the value is not quite correctly stated. In 
the middle of the sixteenth century, the actual value of silver 
relatively to gold was not as 1 to 10, but as 1 to 11.16, and 
in the last twenty years of the century as 1 to 11.9. Shakes- 
peare was obviously not writing a statistical treatise on the 
value of gold and silver, but was merely reflecting somewhat 
indistinctly, as the mirrors of his day reflected, the approxi- 
mate ratio of the two metals. 

In Shakespeare's time big business was just beginning, 
more particularly in international trade, and this led to a 
number of economic devices. One of these was the bill of 
exchange, and frequent references are made to it both liter- 
ally and figuratively. The Pedant in "The Taming of the 
Shrew" in explaining his presence says: 

. . . having come to Padua 
To gather in some debts, my son Lucentio 
Made me acquainted with a weighty cause 
Of love between your daughter and himself. 

Just how he was going to manage this, appears in another 
line, where he says: 

For I have bills for money by exchange 
From Florence and must here deliver them. 

Slender describes himself in "The Merry Wives" as a 
"gentleman born, . . . who writes himself 'Armigero' 

29 



450 YALE REVIEW 

in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation." Shakespeare 
makes several puns upon the word. Dick, the butcher in 
"Henry VI, Part II," says, "My lord, when shall we go 
to Cheapside and take up commodities upon our bills?" 
Borachio, in "Much Ado About Nothing" says, "We are 
like to prove a goodly commodity, being taken up of these 
men's bills." 

In the sixteenth century public banks were beginning 
to be established, especially in Italy and later in Holland. 
The Bank of Genoa was created out of the Casa di S. 
Giorgio in 1586. The Bank of Venice was founded in 1587. 
Although the word "bankrupt" occurs repeatedly, both liter- 
ally and figuratively in Shakespeare, it is curious that the 
word "bank" is not used. The word "broker" however is 
quite common. In "Henry VI, Part II," Hume says: 

They say "A crafty knave does need no broker"; 
Yet am I Suffolk and the cardinal's broker. 

The mortgage was naturally a common basis of credit in 
Shakespeare's days as in ours. Shakespeare only uses the 
word once, but the whole of Sonnet cxxxiv is but a series 
of ingenious applications of this very prosaic business 
device to the affairs of love. One of the great mercantile 
abuses of Elizabeth's time was the granting of monopolies, 
often to courtiers, not for the sake of establishing some form 
of public service which could not be safely undertaken unless 
shielded from competition, but simply as a matter of favorit- 
ism, the sovereign not being above having a share in the 
profits. This is evidently what the Fool in "King Lear" 
has in mind when he says : "No, faith, lords and great men 
will not let me ; if I had a monopoly out, they would have 
part on't: and ladies too, they will not let me have all fool 
to myself; they'll be snatching." 

Business cannot be carried on without bookkeeping, and 
bookkeeping is immensely hampered if there is no good sys- 
tem of arithmetic. Modern business, as well as modern 



SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 451 

/ 
mathematics, would be almost impossible, were it not for the 
introduction into Europe of the so-called Arabic system of 
numerals, which assigns a value to the digits varying with 
their position, and makes it possible to dispense with 
mechanical devices such as the abacus. This system was not 
completed until the sixteenth century and was therefore a 
comparatively new device in Shakespeare's time. That it 
attracted his attention is seen in several passages. The Fool 
in "King Lear" says: "Thou wast a pretty fellow when 
thou hadst no need to care for her frowning; now thou art 
an O without a figure: I am better than thou art now; I 
am a fool, thou art nothing." The same figure is used by 
Polixenes in "The Winter's Tale," when he says: 

Go hence in debt: and therefore, like a cipher, 
Yet standing in rich place, I multiply 
With one "We thank you" many thousands moe 
That go before it. 

That the new method was not in universal use, however, is 
seen in the perplexity of the clown in "The Winter's Tale" 
when in trying to figure up what he is to expend for the 
numerous dainties needed for the shearing feast, he acknowl- 
edges in despair: "I cannot do't without counters." 

Shakespeare does not seem to have been as much inter- 
ested in agriculture and the various questions connected with 
land as he was in the incidents of business life in the cities, 
and yet there are a number of casual references which show 
that he was not blind to the questions which came up in con- 
nection with these interests. In "Henry VI, Part II," he 
introduces a petitioner who asks for redress against the 
Duke of Suffolk for enclosing the commons of Melford. 
This suggests one of the great grievances of the middle of 
the sixteenth century, when the enclosing of the common 
land by the great land-owners often had the effect of turn- 
ing the land which had formerly been cultivated into pas- 
ture, thus depopulating the country and depriving the 



452 YALE REVIEW 

people of the means of subsistence. While this casual refer- 
ence to enclosures indicates a period of transition in land 
tenure, other passages indicate a similar transition with 
regard to the status of labor. When Orlando in "As You 
Like It" refers to 

The constant service of the antique world, 
When service sweat for duty, not for meed ! 

he is something more than a mere laudator temporis acti. 
Shakespeare would hardly have made so young a man refer 
back to the good old days unless there had been a real 
change. In fact, such a change was taking place. Under 
the feudal system every class of society had its duties plainly 
marked out by law and tradition. In the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, labor was becoming more commercial- 
ized. It was passing from a condition of status to one of 
contract. The transition was not unlike that which took 
place in the South after the Civil War; and there, too, the 
former slave-holders are often heard to contrast the constant 
fidelity of the old slaves with the shiftlessness and irresponsi- 
bility of the free negro. 

The transition just referred to was naturally accompanied 
by a good deal of poverty and vagrancy. The kind of 
people whom Dogberry had in mind when he spoke of 
"vagrom men" is seen in the character of Autolycus, itin- 
erant pedlar and pick-pocket, and in the disguise assumed 
by Edgar in "King Lear," when he appeared as a mendi- 
cant in order to escape the anger of Gloucester. He gives 
us a picture of the times drawn from real life when he says : 

The country gives me proof and precedent 
Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, 
Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms 
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary; 
And with this horrible object from low farms, 
Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills, 
Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers, 
Enforce their charity. 



SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 453 

When we think of the tramps who call at our doors and ask 
for money to buy a ticket to a neighboring town where they 
have friends or a job awaiting them, we recognize their pro- 
totype in the Elizabethan "valiant beggar" who says: 
"No, good sweet sir; no, I beseech you, sir: I have a kins- 
man not past three quarters of a mile hence, unto whom I 
was going ; I shall there have money, or any thing I want : 
offer me no money, I pray you; that kills my heart." The 
following bit of autobiography must also seem familiar, 
mutatis mutandis, to any one who has had to do with modern 
confidence men : "Vices, I would say, sir. I know this man 
well: he hath been since an ape-bearer; then a process- 
server, a bailiff; then he compassed a motion of the Prodi- 
gal Son, and married a tinker's wife within a mile where my 
land and living lies; and, having flown over many knavish 
professions, he settled only in rogue: some call him Auto- 
lycus." 

Enough has been said, to show that, if we had no his- 
torical evidence at all with regard to the economic condi- 
tions at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the 
seventeenth century, excepting the plays and poems of 
Shakespeare, we should be able to construct a pretty fair 
picture of the times from these alone. We should know 
that it was a great era of discovery, of enterprise, and of 
commerce reaching distant and still unexplored parts of the 
world. Business was expanding ; and banking, credit, bills 
of exchange, and mortgages were coming more and more 
into use, together with a new system of arithmetic. Primo- 
geniture with its unequal distribution of wealth was the rule, 
but the country was undergoing a transition from the feudal 
system to a more commercialized economic system. There 
were many abuses such as are apt to come up in a period of 
change. The money had undergone depreciation and 
debasement, which had caused losses to many classes. But 
while the currency as a whole had been debased, the great 
fall in the value of silver relatively to gold had not yet gone 



454 YALE REVIEW 

very far. Monopolies and enclosures had tended to widen 
the gap between the rich and the poor. There was much 
vagrancy and there was also discontent among the workers, 
taking mainly the form of political revolt. The attention 
of thinkers was, however, more directed to commercial 
expansion and to questions relating to money, interest, and 
credit than to social readjustment or the improvement of the 
conditions of the laboring classes. 

Of what use is all this? Well, for one thing it tends to 
disprove the notion that economics is a dismal science. If 
the greatest poet of the English tongue was also an econo- 
mist of deep insight, then economics must have something 
to do with poetry. Indeed not only does economic pros- 
perity furnish the humus in which the flower of poetry 
unfolds its greatest beauty, but economic processes supply 
more directly the thoughts, the similes, the action of dramas 
which touch upon the vital interests of men and society. 
There are dismal economists. There are also doleful poets, 
whose very existence confirms the dictum : poet a nascitur non 
fit. For if they had to be made, it is clear that the economic 
demand would not justify the investment of capital in their 
manufacture. If made, we must suppose that "some of 
nature's journeymen had made" them, "and not made them 
well." But if the great poet may be an economist, so the 
really great economist must be something of a poet, whether 
his thoughts be expressed in verse or not. For he must have 
the imagination to visualize both the future and the past ; he 
must see the forces of society in their true proportions and 
in their proper perspective; he too gives to "airy nothing 
a local habitation and a name." After this sentence was 
written I chanced upon a confirmation of it in an unexpected 
quarter. Karl Pearson in his "Grammar of Science," says : 
"All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great 
artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but 
he cannot make great discoveries. . . . When we see a 



SHAKESPEARE AS AN ECONOMIST 455 

great work of the creative imagination, a striking picture or 
a powerful drama, what is the essence of the fascination it 
exercises over us? Why does our aesthetic judgment pro- 
nounce it a true work of art? Is it not because we find con- 
centrated into a brief statement, into a simple formula or a 
few symbols a wide range of human emotions and feelings?" 
This study also throws light on Shakespeare's influence. 
It is the realism, the contact with practical life that makes 
his imagery so telling. Thus if the economist may profit 
by the exercise of the imagination, the poet may likewise 
profit, as many a great poet has done, by understanding 
the economic environment in which he lives. In this age of 
specialization we need to be constantly reminded of the 
inter-relations, not merely of the sciences, but of science and 
art, analysis and synthesis, criticism and creation. The 
greatest of our contemporaries may no longer claim like 
Bacon all knowledge as his province. The modern scholar 
must content himself like Mephistopheles with being "ein 
Teil des Teils der Anfangs Alles war." The expansion of 
our intellectual world is producing a mental feudalism, 
under which the territory is being more and more sub- 
divided; and each of us must be content to govern his own 
little barony with slight regard for his neighbors. But while 
we may not be masters in others' domains, we may at least 
profit by excursions, such as that which I have just 
attempted, into some of the contiguous territory. "Home- 
keeping youth have ever homely wits"; and if we cannot 
hope and do not aim to tell our neighbors how to conduct 
their own affairs, we may at least return from such visits 
better able to manage our own. 



LlBRORy 0F 



CONGR ESs 



i3 5 695 2 * 




